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COLLEGE   AND   THE    MAN 


College  and  the  Man 

An  Address  to  American  Youth 


By 
David  Starr  Jordan 

President  of 
Leland  Stanford  Junior  University 


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1      IN-LUCE-     I 
[VERITATIS    [ 

KiM^iU^^ 

Boston 

American  "Unitarian  Association 

1907 


L/3 


Copyright,  1907 
American  Unitarian  Association 


Printed  by  The  Heintzemann  Press,  Boston 


TO 

JOHN    CASPER    BRANNER 

(JACK    BRANNER    OF    THE    "CORNELL    STRUG") 
WITH    FRAGRANT    MEMORIES 

OF    THE 

GOOD    HARD    TIMES    OF    THE 

EARLY    SEVENTIES 


PREFATORY    NOTE 

THE  substance  of  this  little  book,  in 
one  form  or  another ,1  have  used  many 
times  in  talking  to  boys  and  girls  in  the  high 
schools  of  America.  Part  of  the  matter  ap- 
pears in  the  first  chapter  of  a  volume  called 
"  The  Care  and  Culture  of  Men  "published 
by  Whitaker  and  Ray,  in  San  Francisco, 
and  by  their  courtesy  the  paragraphs  in 
question  are  here  used  again. 


"  The  whole  of  your  life  must  be  spent  in  your 

own  company ,  and  only  the  educated  man 

is  good  company  to  himself" 


N  this  little  book  I  have  a 
plain  word  to  say  to  certain 
men  and  women  of  youth 
and  promise  who  look  for- 
ward to  making  the  most  they  can  of 
themselves.  It  is  a  plea  as  strong  as  I 
know  how  to  make  it,  for  higher  edu- 
cation, for  better  preparation  for  the 
duties  of  life.  I  know  those  well  to 
whom  I  wish  to  speak  :  to  the  boy  and 
the  girl  who  will  heed  it,  the  best  advice 
that  I  or  any  one  else  can  give  is  this,  Go 
to  College! 

And  you  may  say :  These  four  years  are 
the  best  years  of  my  life.  The  good  the 
college  does  should  be  a  great  one  if  I 
must  spend  all  this  time  and  all  this 
money,  all  I  have  perhaps  and  all  I  can 
borrow,  to  gain  it.  What  will  the  college 
do  for  me? 

It  will  do  many  things  for  you  if  you 
are  made  of  the  right  stuff.  If  you  are 
not,  it  may  do  but  very  little.  You  can- 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[«] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[12] 


not  fasten  a  five  thousand  dollar  educa- 
tion to  a  fifty-cent  boy.  The  fool,  the 
dude,  the  shirk  come  out  of  college  very 
much  as  they  go  in.  They  dive  deep  in 
the  Pierian  springs  as  the  duck  dives  in 
the  pond,  and  they  come  up  as  dry  as  the 
duck  does. 

The  college  will  not  do  everything  for 
you.  Whatever  you  are  you  must  make 
yourself.  The  college  will  not  of  itself 
doanythingforyou,butawellspentcol- 
lege  life  is  the  greatest  help  toward  all 
good  things.  Everything  depends  on 
how  you  use  it.  The  college  means  op- 
portunity for  growth,  for  culture,  for 
power,  for  range  of  enjoyment.  If  you 
learn  to  use  it  rightly  all  these  the  col- 
lege will  offer  you. 

The  college  will  bring  you  into  con- 
tact with  the  great  minds  of  the  past, 
with  the  long  roll  of  those  who  through 
the  ages  have  borne  a  mission  to  young 
men  and  young  women,  from  Plato  to 


Emerson,  from  Homer  and  Euripides, 
from  Shakspereand  Goethe,  to  Schiller 
and  Browning.The  great  men  of  all  ages 
and  climes  will  become  your  brothers. 
You  will  learn  to  feel,  with  the  ancient 
Greeks,  the  consolation  of  philosophy. 
You  will  turn  from  the  petty  troubles  of 
the  streets  to  the  thoughts  of  the  mas- 
ters. You  will  learn  the  art  of  "walking 
in  hallowed  cathedrals,"  whatever  may 
be  your  actual  surroundings  of  the  day. 
If  you  once  learn  to  unlock  these  portals, 
no  power  on  earth  can  take  from  you 
the  key.  Moreover,  the  whole  of  your 
life  must  be  spentin  your  owncompany, 
and  only  the  educated  man  is  good  com- 
pany to  himself.  The  uncultivated  man 
looks  out  on  life  through  narrow  win- 
dows and  thinks  that  the  world  is  small. 
He  also  thinks  it  mean  and  unworthy 
because  the  dog-fight  in  the  gutter  is  all 
that  his  eye  can  reach.  The  man  of  cul- 
ture has  infinite  resources  within  him- 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[*3] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[14] 


self,  because  within  himself  is  the  key 
to  all  the  best  that  men  have  thought 
and  done  since  men  first  began  to  think 
and  act. 

Your  college  course  will  bring  you  in- 
to contact  with  the  great  problems  of 
Nature.  You  will  learn  from  your  study 
of  Nature's  laws  more  than  the  books 
can  tell  you  of  the  grandeur,  the  power, 
theimmutability  of  God.You  will  learn 
to  face  great  problems  seriously.  You 
will  learn  to  work  patiently  at  their  so- 
lution,thoughyou  may  know  that  many 
generations  must  each  add  its  mite  to 
your  work  before  a  final  answer  to  any 
problem  can  be  reached.  You  will  learn 
to  know  "facts  amid  appearances,"  to 
distinguish  truth  from  the  weight  of  au- 
thority. You  will  find  out  some  things 
which  you  will  know  to  be  true,  eter- 
nally and  absolutely  true,  and  beside  this 
knowledge  the  "traditions  of  ages"  will 
count  for  no  more  than  the  hearsay  of 


yesterday.  You  will  learn  insensibly  to 
govern  your  life  by  the  influence  of  real- 
ities and  not  of  shams.  You  will  learn 
how  little  through  the  ages  it  matters 
what  men  say  of  each  other  and  how 
much  it  matters  what  a  man  does.  You 
will  learn  your  part  of  the  law  of  heaven 
and  earth,  the  law  which  is  ever  "solid, 
substantial,  cast  and  unchanging." 

I  know  that  the  conceit  and  flippancy 
of  the  college  student  is  proverbial.  But 
you  will  find  that  the  conceit  of  the  col- 
lege student  who  knows  something,  if 
not  much,  is  a  very  little  th  ing  beside  the 
conceit  of  a  man  who  knows  nothing  at 
all. 

Man's  life,  says  Pascal,  lies  between 
two  ignorances:  theignorance  of  stupid- 
ity ,which  imagines  that  it  knows  all  that 
is  worth  knowing,  and  the  ignorance 
of  wisdom,  which  perceives  the  infinite 
disproportion  between  what  we  know 
and  the  great  unknown. 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[•s] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[16] 


Your  college  life  will  bring  you  into 
contact  with  men  whose  influence  will 
strengthen  and  inspire.  The  ideal  col- 
lege professor  should  be  the  best  man  in 
the  community.  He  should  have  about 
him  nothing  mean  or  paltry  or  cheap. 
He  should  be  to  the  student  as  David 
Copperfield's  Agnes,  "always  pointing 
the  way  upward."  That  we  are  all  this 
I  shall  not  pretend.  The  college  profes- 
sors I  know  are  all  too  human.  We  have 
lived  too  early  to  ripen  well.  We  have 
been  soured  and  starved  and  dwarfed 
in  many  ways,  and  most  of  us  are  not 
the  men  we  might  have  been  if  we  had 
had  your  advantages  for  early  training. 
But  unpractical,  one-sided,  pedantic 
though  the  college  professor  may  be,  or 
though  you  think  he  may  be  before  you 
know  him,  he  is  sound  at  heart  and  he 
is  sure  to  help  you  to  higher  ambitions. 
He  is  not  mercenary,  and  his  ideals  are 
thoseofcultureandprogress.Heiskeep- 


ing  the  torch  burning  which  you  young 
men  and  young  women  of  the  Twenti- 
eth Century  may  carry  to  the  top  of  the 
mountain. 

But  here  and  there  among  us  even  now 
is  the  ideal  teacher,the  teacher  of  the  fu- 
ture, the  teacher  to  know  whom  is  of  it- 
self a  liberal  education.  I  have  met  some 
such  in  my  time,  and  there  are  many 
more  such  now  than  there  were  when  I 
was  younger.  Here  are  the  names  of  a 
few  of  those  I  knew,  and  there  are  many 
more  such:  Louis  Agassiz,  Andrew 
Dickson  White,  Goldwin  Smith, 
Charles  Frederick  Hartt,  Burt  Green 
Wilder,  James  Russell  Lowell,  George 
William  Curtis,  Daniel  Kirkwood — 
it  was  worth  ten  years  of  one's  life  to 
know  well  one  such  man  as  these. 

I  remember  very  well  the  day  on  which 
as  a  freshman  at  Cornell  I  first  met  a 
great  man.  I  was  wandering  across  the 
fields  on  the  East  Hill  above  Ithaca, 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[*7] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[18] 


when  I  saw  twomenin  their  shirtsleeves 
lying  down  in  the  shade  of  a  tree.  I  went 
up  to  them,  I  do  not  remember  why, 
nor  do  I  know  what  either  of  them  said 
to  me.  B  lit  I  came  away  exalted :  my  feet 
touched  only  the  high  places.  I  became 
for  the  time  a  poet,  and  reminiscent 
of  the  wonderful  day  when  Browning 
once  "saw  Shelley  plain,"  I  made  this 
record  of  my  experience: 

"  Once  in  his  shirt  sleeves  lying  on  the  grass, 
Beneath  the  shadow  of  a  chestnut  tree, 
I  saw  James  Russell  Lowell  face  to  face, 
And  the  great  poet  rose  and  spoke  to  me." 

This  is  not  much  considered  as  poetry. 
It  is  everything  considered  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  dawning  of  a  boy's  in- 
tellectual life. 

Garfield  once  said  that  a  log  with 
Mark  Hopkins  at  one  end  of  it  and  a 
student  at  the  other  would  be  a  univer- 
sity. Such  a  university  would  not  give 
everything,  but  it  would  give  a  prepa- 


ration  for  everything  and  it  would  yield 
the  choicest  product  of  university  life, 
— the  personality  of  the  scholar.  And 
now  in  the  years  when  men  build  great 
universities  as  they  once  built  cathe- 
drals, the  one  thing  hardest  to  find,  and 
most  precious  when  found,  is  the  man 
who  has  the  power  of  moulding  young 
men,  the  power  which  was  the  attribute 
of  the  great  teacher  of  Williams  Col- 
lege. But  go  where  you  will,  in  great 
colleges  or  small,  in  institutions  meanly 
clothed  or  in  those  grandly  equipped, 
you  will  find  some  man  who  will  be  to 
you  in  some  degree  what  Mark  Hop- 
kins was  to  Garfield,  and  to  know  him 
will  repay  you  for  all  your  sacrifices.  It 
was  said  of  Eliphalet  Nott  of  Union 
College  that  he  "  took  the  sweepings  of 
other  colleges  and  sent  them  out  pure 
gold."  Such  was  his  influence  on  young 
men.  "Have  a  university  in  shanties," 
said  Cardinal  Newman,  "nay,  in  tents, 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[*9] 


College      but  have  great  teachers  in   it."    "It 
and  the      doesn't  matter  much  what  your  stu- 
dies  are,"    Emerson    once  wrote   to 
his  daughter.  "It  all  lies  in  who  your 
teacher  is." 

Again,  the  power  that  comes  from  as- 
sociation withone'sfellow  students  can- 
not be  overestimated.  Here  and  there 
some  young  invertebrate  given  too 
much  money  to  burn,  or,  it  may  be, 
spoiled  by  home  coddling,  falls  into  bad 
company  in  college  and  leaves  it  the 
worse  for  having  entered  it.  But  how- 
ever conspicuous  these  fellows  may  be, 
or  in  what  degree  in  some  places  they 
may  seem  to  set  the  fashion,  they  are 
really  few  in  number  and  weak  in  influ- 
ence. Most  of  our  apples  are  not  worm- 
eaten  at  the  core.  The  average  student 
enters  college  for  a  purpose  and  you  will 
lose  nothing  and  may  gain  much  by 
associating  with  him.  Among  our  col- 

[  20  ]        legestudentsofto-dayarethebestyoung 


men  and  young  women  of  our  time.  All 
the  strong  men  of  the  future  will  be  col- 
lege men,  for  the  day  is  come  when  the 
man  of  force  realizes  that  through  the 
college  his  power  will  be  made  greater. 
The  college  is  ready  to  give  him  help 
which  he  cannot  afford  to  lose.  And  in 
this  relation  each  college  man  and  wo- 
man helps  to  mold  the  character  and  to 
shape  the  work  of  every  other.  In  the 
German  universities  the  comradeship 
among  free  spirits,  "Gemeingeist  unter 
freienGeistern,"inthewordsofUlrich 
von  Hutten,  is  one  of  the  noblest  ele- 
ments in  the  whole  system  of  higher 
education.  The  name  "  College  Spirit" 
is  applied  or  misapplied  to  many  differ- 
ent things.  But  of  all  its  meanings  this 
one  is  the  best: "  Comradery  among  free 
spirits," — one  of  the  noblest  gifts  of 
the  sane  college  life. 

In  hiseulogy  on  his  great  patron  Hum- 
boldt, spoken  half  a  century  ago,  Agas- 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[21] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[22] 


siz  thus  speaks  of  his  early  life  in  the 
University  of  Munich : 

"The  University  had  opened  under 
the  most  brilliant  auspices.  Almost  all 
of  our  professors  were  also  eminent  in 
some  department  of  science  or  litera- 
ture. They  were  not  men  who  taught 
from  text-books,  or  even  read  lectures 
made  up  from  extracts  from  original 
works.  They  themselves  were  original 
investigators,  daily  contributing  to  the 
sum  of  human  knowledge.  And  they 
were  not  only  our  teachers  but  our 
friends.  The  best  spirit  prevailed  among 
the  professors  and  students.  We  were 
often  the  companions  of  their  walks, 
often  present  at  their  discussions,  and 
when  we  met  to  give  lectures  among 
ourselves,  as  we  often  did,  our  profes- 
sors were  among  our  listeners,  cheering 
and  stimulating  us  in  all  our  efforts  after 
independent  research. 

"My  room  was  our  meeting  place: 


bedroom,  lecture-room,  study,  muse- 
um, library,  fencing-room  all  in  one. 
Students  and  professors  used  to  call  it 
the  Little  Academy. 

"Here,  in  this  little  room,  Schimp- 
fer  and  Braun  first  discussed  their  new- 
ly discovered  laws  of  phyllotaxy,  that 
marvellous  rhythmical  arrangement  of 
the  leaves  of  plants.  Here  Michahelles 
first  gave  us  the  story  of  his  explorations 
of  the  Adriatic.  Here  Born  exhibited 
his  preparations  of  the  anatomy  of  the 
lamprey.  Here  Rudolphi  told  us  the 
results  of  his  exploration  of  the  Bava- 
rian Alps  and  the  Baltic.  Here  Dr. 
Dbllinger  himself  first  showed  to  us, 
his  students,  before  he  gave  them  to  the 
scientific  world,  his  preparations  of  the 
villi  of  the  alimentary  canal;  and  here 
came  the  great  anatomist,  Meckel,  to 
see  my  collection  of  fish-skeletons  of 
which  he  had  heard  from  Dbllinger. 

"These,  my  fellow-students  at  Mu- 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[23] 


College  nich,  were  a  bright,  promising  set,  boys 
and  the  then  in  years,  m-any  of  whom  did  not 
Man  iive  t0  make  their  names  famous  in  the 
annals  of  science."* 

Thus  it  was  at  Munich,  eighty  years 
ago,  and  the  influence  of  that  little  band 
of  students  is  still  felt  in  the  world  of 
science. 

Such  a  history,  in  a  degree,  has  been 
that  of  many  other  associations  of  stu- 
dents, interested  in  other  branches  of 
thought,  in  history,  in  philosophy,  in 
philology,  in  religion. 

We  are  told  that  Methodism  first  arose 
in  a  little  band  of  college  students,  in- 
terested in  the  realities  of  religion,  amid 
ceremonies  and  forms. 

At  Williams  College,  in  Massachu- 
setts, there  stands  a  monument  which 
marks  the  spot  where  a  hay-stack  once 
stood.  Under  this  hay-stack  three  col- 

*  Condensed  from  Agassiz's  Eulogy  on  Hum- 
[  24  ]         boldt. 


lege  students  knelt  and  promised  each 
other  to  devote  their  lives  to  the  preach- 
ing of  the  gospel  of  Christ  among  the 
heathen.  Thus  was  founded  the  first 
foreign  mission  of  America. 

In  my  own  field  I  have  had  this  expe- 
rience. 

In  the  year  1868  I  entered  a  newly- 
founded  university  as  a  member  of  its 
pioneer  freshman  class.  I  wished  to  be 
a  naturalist,  and  I  was  the  first  student 
who  had  come  to  the  university  with 
that  ambition.  A  special  feature  of  Cor- 
nell University  was  to  be  the  promotion 
ofscience,andsoyoungnaturalistscame 
from  all  over  the  land  to  make  use  of  its 
advantages. 

We  formed  a  society,  something  like 
the  little  academy  of  Munich,  and  in 
this  we  trained  each  other.  We  told  each 
other  of  all  that  we  had  seen  and  how 
we  had  tried  to  see  it.  Nor  has  this  mu- 
tual influence  yet  faded  away. 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[*5] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[26] 


I  look  over  the  record  of  the  Cornell 
alumni,  and  I  find  that  each  of  these 
men,boys  of  forty  years  ago,is  now  him- 
self the  center  of  a  similar  circle  of 
young  men. 

Comstock,  Gage  and  Nichols,  profes- 
sors now  at  Cornell,  Trelease  in  the 
Shaw  Botanic  Garden,  Patrick  in  the 
University  of  Kansas,Branner  andDud- 
ley  at  Stanford,  Kellermann  and  Lazen- 
by  in  the  University  of  Ohio,  Simonds 
in  the  University  of  Texas,  Holmes  in 
the  University  of  North  Carolina,  Scott 
in  Princeton  College,  Rathbun  and 
Hitchcock  in  the  Smithsonian  Institu- 
tion,Salmon  andBarnard  in  the  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture,  Derby  at  the  head 
of  theNational  Museum  of  Brazil,The- 
odore  Comstock  in  Los  Angeles,  Bray- 
ton  in  the  Indiana  Medical  College, 
Cushing  among  the  Zuni  Indians,  a  Zu- 
ni  chief  himself,  engaged  for  years  in 
worming  out  the  secrets  of  their  ancient 


civilization,  Copeland,  brightest  of  all, 
who  first  studied  with  me  the  fishes  and 
birds  of  Indiana,  and  who  died  untime- 
ly, before  the  world  had  come  to  know 
him. 

All  of  these,  in  the  early  seventies,  used 
to  meet  in  a  little  room  in  Ithaca,  and 
to  show  each  other  birch-blossoms  and 
bacteria  and  bluebottle  flies,  and  to  dis- 
cuss with  each  other  the  problems  of  Na- 
ture,those  problems  of  the  ages, "  which 
are  always  inviting  solution,  and  which 
are  never  solved." 

Each  of  us  owes  much  to  the  college, 
its  professors,  its  libraries,  its  laborato- 
ries,but  something  of  the  powers  of  each, 
as  teacher  or  as  investigator,  has  been 
given  by  each  of  the  others. 

Many  a  great  genius  has  risen  and  de- 
veloped in  solitude,  as  the  trailing  ar- 
butus grows  in  the  wood  and  scorns  cul- 
tivation. Some  men  of  the  finest  fibre 
or  the  sweetest  fragrance  are  like  this 


College 
and  the 
Man 


l>7] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[28] 


shrinking  flower  of  the  northern  pine 
woods.  Poets  sing  because  their  souls 
are  filled  with  music,  not  because  they 
have  learned  the  gamut  of  passions  in 
the  schools. 

But  all  great  work  in  science,  in  phi- 
losophy, in  the  humanities,  has  come 
from  entering  into  the  work  of  others. 

There  was  once  a  Chinese  emperor 
who  decreed  that  he  was  to  be  the  First ; 
that  all  history  should  begin  with  him, 
and  that  nothing  should  be  before  him. 
But  we  can  not  enforce  such  a  decree. 
We  are  not  emperors  of  China.  The 
world's  work  and  the  world's  experi- 
ence does  not  begin  with  us.  We  must 
know  what  has  been  done  before  us.  We 
must  know  the  paths  our  predecessors 
have  trodden  if  we  would  tread  them 
further.  We  must  stand  upon  their 
shoulders  —  dwarfs  upon  the  shoul- 
ders of  giants,  if  we  would  look  farther 
into  the  future  than  they.  Science,  lite- 


rature,  statesmanship,  cannot  for  a  mo- 
ment let  go  of  the  past. 

Thoreau  lived  in  the  woods  by  the 
side  of  Walden  Pond  and  spoke  lightly 
of  the  influence  of  Harvard  College. 
But  he  had  the  librarian's  card  of  Har- 
vard College  in  his  pocket,  and  on  the 
table  of  birch-bark  were  books  from  the 
college  library  which  Harvard  College 
taught  him  to  read,  and  these  books,  as 
well  as  the  influences  of  Walden  Pond, 
produced  those  clear-cut  sentences  of 
his  which  we  so  much  admire.  Walden 
Pond  alone  could  not  do  it.  Walden 
Pond  and  Concord  Woods  produced 
the  screech-owl  and  the  loon  and  the 

"  Men  of  wild  habits, 
Partridges  and  rabbits," 

of  which  their  historian  tells. 

Harvard  College  did  not  make  Tho- 
reau, for  it  turns  out  for  every  Thoreau, 
or  Emerson,  or  Lowell,  or  Sumner,  a 
hundred  idlers  or  cynics ;  but  she  cer- 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[29] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[30] 


tainly  did  make  Thoreau  worth  more 
to  the  world  than  he  would  have  been 
had  his  whole  life  been  spent  on  the 
shores  of  Walden  Pond. 

There  was  once  in  the  North  of  Scot- 
land a  common  —  or,  rather,  a  very 
uncommon  —  stonecutter.  He  had  no 
schools  but  the  quarries  and  the  moun- 
tains —  no  schoolmaster  but  nature. 
Yet  when  Agassiz  came  to  visit  Crom- 
arty and  Stromness  in  search  of  fossil 
fishes,  he  found  that  in  these  quarries 
was  a  man  who  could  give  more  of  the 
testimony  of  these  rocks  than  could 
the  great  naturalist  himself.  Hugh 
Miller  knew  Stromness  as  no  one  else 
could,  yet  another  great  geologist  of 
that  time,  Alexander  Von  Humboldt, 
knew  the  whole  world  almost  as  much 
as  Hugh  Miller  knew  Stromness.  The 
man  of  the  schools  had  entered  into  the 
labors  of  his  predecessors,  while  the 
stonecutter  had  been  compelled  to  hew 


his  own  path  unaided,  and  great  as  he  College 
was,  his  pathway  led  little  beyond  the  and  the 
confines  of  Stromness.  Man 

The  chances  are  that  you  are  neither 
a  Robert  Burns  nor  a  Hugh  Miller,  and 
if  you  are  left  to  work  out  your  own 
education  unaided,  you  will  probably 
never  do  it.  The  stimulus  of  daily  duties 
is  needed  to  bring  out  your  strength. 
There  is  nothing  like  the  steady  pres- 
sure of  the  schools  to  enforce  habits  of 
mental  diligence.Theunschooledmind 
rebels  at  steady  work — but  it  is  the 
steady  work  that  counts.  The  great 
lights  of  history  are  not  flash-lights. 
The  race  is  not  always  to  the  swift,  but 
to  him  who  has  the  staying  power.  He 
will  know  a  pop-gun  from  a  cannon, 
and  as  Emerson  says,  "he  will  not 
quit  his  belief  that  the  pop-gun  is  a  pop- 
gun, though  all  the  ancient  and  honor- 
able of  the  earth  affirm  it  to  be  the  crack 
of  doom."  [  31  ] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[32] 


The  college  teaches  men  the  value  of 
team  work.  This  is  one  of  the  lessons 
for  good  which  come  from  college 
athletics.  College  men  learn  to  pull  to- 
gether, to  yell  together,  to  work  to- 
gether, each  one  subordinating  himself 
to  the  success  of  the  whole.  The  me- 
thods which  honorably  win  in  a  foot- 
ball game  will  win  anywhere  else.  Let 
college  men  stand  together  in  public 
affairs,  and  they  will  wield  an  influence 
which  no  other  group  of  men  can  with- 
stand. For  college  men  know  how  to 
do  this,  and  to  do  it  for  the  sake  of  an 
ideal,  not  for  money  or  for  notoriety.  It 
has  been  well  said  of  President  Roose- 
velt, a  typical  college  man  in  public  life, 
"Money  can  never  defeat  a  man  who  is 
not  working  for  money." 

Again,  the  training  of  the  colleges  em- 
phasizes the  individuality  of  a  man.  It 
takes  his  best  abilities  and  raises  them  to 
the  third  or  tenth  power,  as  we  say  in 


algebra.  It  is  true  that  our  colleges  have 
tried  and  many  of  them  still  try  to  sup- 
press individuality,  to  cast  all  students 
in  the  same  mold.  To  do  something  of 
the  kind,  to  make  each  student  a  typical 
gentleman  or  a  typical  clergyman,  was 
for  centuries  the  ideal  of  more  than 
one  of  the  English  colleges  from  which 
the  American  college  took  its  early 
form.  Musty  old  men  in  the  dust  of 
libraries,  "who  knew  no  use  for  the 
hands  save  to  hold  an  old  book  in  them,' ' 
have  tried  to  make  young  men  like 
themselves.  "The  sceptre  of  the  Ro- 
man emperor  has  crumbled  into  dust," 
says  Rasmus  Anderson,  "but  the  rod 
of  the  Roman  schoolmaster  is  over  us 
still."  The  colleges  have  placed  memo- 
ry above  mastery,  glibness  above  since- 
rity, manners  above  manhood,  and  the 
disputes  of  the  dead  past  above  the  work 
of  the  living  present. 
But  say  what  we  will  of  old  methods, 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[33] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[34] 


and  in  my  time  I  have  myself  said  a  good 
many  hard  things  and  I  may  say  them 
again,  they  were  often  effective  towards 
great  ends.  The  individuality  of  the 
youth  burns  through  the  cast-iron  cur- 
riculum. He  does  his  own  work,  thinks 
his  own  thoughts  and  lives  his  own  life, 
and  the  man  is  much  more  the  man  he 
ought  to  be  for  giving  these  years  to 
higher  thoughts  and  to  the  nobler  com- 
radery  of  the  college  men. 

There  has  been  a  steady  progress  in 
the  development  of  university  ideals  in 
America.  The  old  motto  of  Winchester 
College  in  England  is  this:  "Manners 
make  the  man.' '  We  have  passed  beyond 
this.  We  have  learned  that  manners  are 
outside  the  man.  They  serve  their  end 
by  making  the  man  more  agreeable  and 
more  effective,  but  manhood  wanting, 
it  is  of  little  consequence  what  the 
manners  are.  If  manners  make  the 
man,  solely  by  raising  him  from  the 


rude  class  of  workers  to  the  choice 
class  of  idlers,  they  have  served  no  good 
purpose  whatever.  An  early  ideal  of 
college  education  was  just  this,  to  raise 
a  man  from  one  class  to  another,  from 
the  caste  in  which  he  must  work  for 
others  to  the  finer  one  in  which  others 
would  work  for  him.  In  all  these  mat- 
ters scholarship  in  itself  availed  but 
little.  Mental  training  was  but  an  ac- 
cessory to  social  training,and  in  the  his- 
toric colleges  of  England,  the  ultimate 
ideal  of  education  is  still  a  social  one. 
In  the  universities  of  Germany  the  so- 
cial side  has  been  scarcely  considered. 
The  German  mind  ploughs  deeply.  It 
goes  to  the  bed-rock,  and  on  almost  all 
questions  the  last  word  is  said  by  Ger- 
man erudition.  The  value  of  thorough- 
ness is  the  great  lesson  which  Germany 
has  given  to  modern  civilization,  and 
our  American  colleges  have  not  been 
slow  to  heed  this  lesson. 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[35] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[36] 


But  after  all,  the  purpose  of  higher 
education  in  America  is  not  erudition 
any  more  than  it  is  social  perferment. 
It  is  found  in  the  development  of 
individual  effectiveness.  Education  is 
needed  in  the  business  of  living.  The 
man  is  worth  more  to  the  community 
and  more  to  himself  in  proportion  as 
he  realizes  his  native  possibilities.  His 
work  may  deal  with  great  things  or 
with  small  ones.  His  aims  may  be  ar- 
tistic, scientific,  philanthropic,  com- 
mercial, selfish  or  altruistic;  the  more 
capable  the  man  in  attaining  these 
aims  the  better  it  is  for  all  other  men. 
"  There  is  always  room  for  the  man  of 
force,  and  he  makes  room  for  many." 
"America,"  says  Emerson  again, 
"means  opportunity."  We  look  up  to 
no  class  of  men:  we  look  down  on 
none.  There  is  no  class  of  men  whom 
we  wish  to  uphold,  and  no  other  class 
whom  we  wish  officially  or  socially  to 


degrade.  We  would  develop  all  the 
latent  talent  of  the  youth  of  our  com- 
munity, the  most  precious  of  all  its  pos- 
sessions, as  President  White  used  to 
say,  and  we  would  give  this  talent  the 
chance  to  make  itself  effective.  This  is 
the  highest  purpose  of  the  American 
public  school,  and  the  American  uni- 
versity, whatever  its  form,  in  its  essence 
must  always  be  a  public  school,  a  crea- 
ture and  a  creator  of  democracy. 

It  is  not  true  that  this  ideal  of  effec- 
tiveness is  essentially  a  commercial  one, 
that  the  higher  education  in  America 
is  conditioned  by  dollars  and  cents.  It 
asks  that  each  man  do  well  the  work 
he  has  to  do.  Whether  in  engineering 
problems  or  financial  organization, 
whether  in  pure  science  or  in  art,  it 
asks  that  whatever  is  done  should  be 
done  wisely  and  well.  It  should  be  done 
with  brains  and  energy,  with  deftness 
and  taste,  with  courage  and  conscience, 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[37] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[38] 


and  this  is  the  ideal  of  effectiveness. 

Throughout  the  world,  the  best  of 
our  Americans  are  counted  among 
those  who  bring  about  results.  To  be 
with  "him  that  overcometh,"  to  learn 
his  methods  and  to  share  his  spirit  is 
a  good  reason  why  you — the  boy  to 
whom  I  write  these  words — should  go 
to  the  American  college. 

To  do  small  things  does  not  take 
much  preparation.  But  it  is  as  easy  to 
do  great  things  as  small  if  you  only 
know  how.  The  need  of  great  things 
is  about  you  everywhere.  You  have  but 
one  life  to  live — make  this  one  count. 
And  for  doing  great  things  when  the 
time  comes,  the  best  preparation  is  to 
practice  on  the  smaller  ones.  And  a 
graded  series  of  these  smaller  tasks 
which  lead  to  larger  ones  it  is  the  aim 
of  the  American  college  to  prepare. 

It  is  true  that  great  men  in  other  days 
have  set  their  own  tasks,  gained  their 


own  training,  and  made  the  world  bet- 
ter at  last  for  having  lived  in  it.  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  grew  up  in  the  woods  of 
SpencerCounty,Indiana,  training  him- 
self to  the  mastery  of  language  by  the 
burning  hickory  bark  on  a  frontier 
hearth.  Other  Lincolns  may  do  the 
same  in  future  days.  So  often  as  Lin- 
colns are  born  in  a  land  of  freedom,  in 
some  fashion  their  power  will  be  felt. 
But  the  Lincoln  of  to-day  will  use  every 
help  he  finds  about  him.  The  help  of 
the  state  university  costs  but  little 
more  than  the  shagbark  hickory,  and 
his  strong  arm  is  good  for  the  differ- 
ence. The  Lincoln  of  your  century, 
like  the  Lincoln  of  the  last,  will  be  a 
self-made  man.  All  men  of  force  and 
individuality  are  self-made  men  in  this 
sense,  but  they  are  not  made  without 
material.  Your  self-made  Lincoln  of  to- 
day will  use  the  best  tools  he  can  find 
in  the  making.    And  the  best  tools 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[39] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[40] 


which  wise  men  know  how  to  make, 
tools  of  books,  of  apparatus  and  of 
methods,  are  gathered  together  in  the 
college.  As  matters  are  in  America 
to-day,  the  education  gained  through 
the  pine-knot  on  the  cabin  hearth  is 
not  an  evidence  of  perseverance.  It  is 
rather  a  sign  of  indifference,  the  mark 
of  a  man  careless  as  to  the  best  way  of 
doing  things.  A  training  which  fails  to 
disclose  the  secret  of  power  is  unworthy 
the  name  of  Education. 

I  have  spoken  thus  far  of  the  college 
as  though  all  colleges  were  alike.  In 
a  way,  they  are.  They  all  aim  at  exal- 
tation of  the  mind,  but  they  differ 
very  much  in  breadth,  in  honesty,  and 
in  effectiveness.  Consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, they  differ  in  their  aims,  and 
in  the  kind  of  men  to  whom  these 
aims  appeal.  You  must  learn  to  feel 
this  difference  and  to  seek  among  them 
the  men  and  things  you  need.   It  is  no 


part  of  my  purpose  to  discuss  these  dif- 
ferences. That  is  your  part.  All  col- 
leges have  a  message,  and  all  have  a 
message  for  you;  and  it  is  for  you  to 
listen  to  the  one  that  speaks  in  clearest 
tones. 

Again,  the  educated  man  has  the  cou- 
rage of  his  convictions  because  the  edu- 
cated man  only  has  any  real  convictions. 
He  knows  how  convictions  should  be 
formed.  What  he  believes  he  takes  on 
his  own  authority,  not  because  it  is  in 
the  newspaper  he  reads,  in  the  creed 
of  his  church,  or  in  the  platform  of 
his  party.  So  he  counts  as  a  unit  in 
every  community,  not  as  one  of  the  do- 
zen, the  hundred,  who  can  be  counted 
to  vote  at  the  word  of  their  party  lead- 
ers. To  "see  things  as  they  really  are  " 
is  one  of  the  crowning  privileges  of  the 
educated  man.  To  help  others  to  see 
them  so  is  one  of  the  greatest  services 
he  can  render  to  the  community. 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[4i] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[42] 


But  you  may  say,  all  this  may  be  fine 
and  true,  but  it  does  not  apply  to  my 
case.  I  am  no  genius.  I  shall  never  be 
a  scholar.  I  want  simply  to  get  along. 
Give  me  such  an  education  that  I  can 
keep  accounts,  or  teach  school,  or  run 
an  engine,  and  not  have  to  work  out 
of  doors  in  the  winter,  and  I  shall  be 
satisfied.  Any  kind  of  school  will  be 
good  enough  for  me. 

"The  youth  gets  together  his  mate- 
rials," saysThoreau,  "  to  build  a  bridge 
to  the  moon,  or  perchance  a  palace  or 
a  temple  upon  earth,  and  at  length  the 
middle-aged  man  concludes  to  build  a 
woodshed  with  them." 

Now  why  not  plan  for  a  woodshed 
at  first  and  save  all  this  waste  of  time 
and  material?  But  the  very  good  of  it 
all  lies  in  the  effort  for  the  higher 
things.  So  long  as  you  are  at  work  on 
your  bridge  to  the  moon  you  will  shun 
the  saloon  and  we  shall  not  see  you  on 


the  dry-goods  box  in  front  of  the  cor- 
ner grocery.  The  man  who  sets  out  in 
life  to  build  one  great  temple  is  the  one 
who  ends  in  building  many.  "  I  never 
dreamed  that  I  could  do  so  much." 
This  is  the  experience  of  the  man  who 
has  learned  to  save  his  time,  to  seize 
his  opportunities,  and  to  do  all  things 
well.  There  is  many  a  man  who  spends 
his  life  in  a  woodshed  who  might  have 
built  a  temple  if  he  had  only  begun 
right. 

It  does  not  hurt  a  boy  to  be  ambitious. 
In  the  pure-minded  youth  ambition 
is  the  sum  of  all  the  virtues.  Lack  of 
ambition  means  failure  from  the  start. 
The  man  who  is  aiming  at  nothing  and 
cares  not  to  rise  is  already  dead.  Only 
the  sexton  and  the  undertaker  can 
serve  his  purposes.  The  great  army  of 
the  unemployed  and  of  the  unemploy- 
able now  disturbing  the  social  peace  of 
England,  is  made  up  of  those  who  work 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[43] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[44] 


in  the  way  they  call  "ca'  canny"  in 
the  British  factories.  "Ca'  canny"  is 
to  do  as  little  as  possible  so  as  to  make 
the  job  go  as  far  as  it  can.  By  and  bye 
there  are  no  more  jobs,  or  they  go  to 
some  one  else.  If  a  man  has  a  right 
to  work,  the  work  has  a  right  to  the 
man.  It  must  ask  him  to  do  it  with  a 
snap.  If  one  is  not  willing  to  do  his  part 
on  the  earth,  he  would,  as  Mark  Twain 
puts  it,  better  "  be  under  it  —  inspiring 
the  cabbages."  It  is  said  that  the  mod- 
ern philosophy  of  labor  is  to  do  a 
little  less  work  all  the  time,  and  al- 
ways for  a  little  more  pay.  Against 
this  is  set  the  blunt  wisdom  of  Gene- 
ral Booth  in  his  talk  to  English  work- 
men: "Perhaps  you  have  the  foolish 
notion  that  there  is  an  easier  way  of 
living  than  by  hard  work.  This  is  sil- 
ly. The  easiest  way  of  earning  a  liv- 
ing is  by  working  for  it  and  taking  a 
delight  in  your  work." 


The  old  traveler  Rafinesque  tells  us 
that  when  he  was  a  boy  he  read  the  voy- 
ages of  Captain  Cook  and  Le  Vaillant 
and  Pallas,  and  that  he  was  inspired  to 
be  a  great  traveler  like  them.  "  And  so, 
I  became  such,"  he  adds  shortly.  If  you 
say  to  yourself —  I  will  be  a  historian, 
a  statesman,  an  artist,  an  engineer:  if 
you  never  unsay  it,  if  you  take  advan- 
tage of  every  aid  which  comes  in  your 
way  and  reject  all  help  which  would 
turn  you  aside,  you  will  sometime  reach 
your  goal .  The  world  turns  aside  to  let  any 
man  pass  who  knows  whither  he  is  going! 

But  a  college  education  costs  money, 
you  may  say.  I  have  no  money,  there- 
fore I  cannot  go  to  college.  But  this  is 
nonsense.  If  you  have  health  and 
strength  and  no  one  dependent  on  you, 
you  cannot  be  poor.  There  is  no  greater 
luck  that  a  young  man  can  have  than 
to  be  thrown  on  his  own  resources.  I 
know  that  the  air  is  filled  with  the 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[45] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[46] 


dolorous  whine  that  the  poor  man  has 
no  chance,  the  rich  grow  richer  while 
the  poor  grow  poorer,  that  opportuni- 
ties are  all  taken  and  that  there  is  not 
enough  money  or  work  to  go  around. 
There  is  some  truth  at  the  bottom  of 
this  cant,  but  none  to  the  young  men 
of  spirit.  Never  since  the  world  began 
has  he  found  such  opportunities  as  now. 
Wealth  and  poverty,  success  and  fail- 
ure, happiness  and  misery  rest  more  and 
more  on  the  man  and  the  man's  own 
deserts,  less  and  less  on  society.  If  you 
choose  failure  and  misery  you  will  get 
it  more  surely  than  men  did  a  hundred 
years  ago.  It  will  come  more  quickly 
and  may-be  last  longer.  But  the  same 
is  true  of  success  if  you  choose  that. 
The  whole  thing  rests  with  you,  with 
you  yourself,  —  not  with  your  grand- 
father nor  with  the  set  into  which  you 
were  born.  Do  a  little  more  than  you 
are  paid  to  do,  and  men  will  be  eager 


to  pay  you  more,  but  always  on  the 
same  strenuous  conditions. 

There  are  only  two  castes  in  America, 
the  one  which  tries  to  get  more  than  it 
earns,  and  the  one  which  tries  to  earn 
more  than  it  gets.  The  first  class  is 
divided  into  two  suborders,  those  who 
succeed  —  the  idle  rich,  and  those  who 
fail — the  idle  poor. 

And  in  our  country,  in  our  day,  the 
odds  are  against  the  rich  man's  son.  Of 
the  many  college  men  who  have  risen 
to  prominence  in  my  time,  the  great 
majority  were  college  boys  who  had  no 
wealth  to  back  them. 

In  the  early  days  of  Cornell  Univer- 
sity there  was  a  boarding  club  of  poor 
students,  the  "  Struggle  for  Existence" 
it  was  called,  but  later  even  letters  be- 
came expensive  and  "the  Strug"  was 
the  only  name  it  could  afford.  Its  mem- 
bers worked  at  all  kinds  of  jobs,  what- 
ever would  help  to  make  both  ends 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[47] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[48] 


meet.  They  lived  "  close  to  the  bone," 
as  the  old  phrase  is,  but  they  carried  it 
through,  and  to-day  there  are  more  suc- 
cessful men  who  have  graduated  from 
"the  Strug"  than  from  any  other  club 
or  organization  within  my  Alma 
Mater. 

The  rich  man's  son  may  enter  college 
with  better  preparation  than  you,  he 
may  wear  better  clothes,  he  may  feed 
at  a  finer  table,  he  may  graduate 
younger,  but  you  can  make  up  for  lost 
time  by  cleaner  grit.  You  will  step  from 
the  Commencement  stage  into  no  un- 
known world.  You  have  already  meas- 
ured swords  with  the  great  antagonist 
and  the  first  victory  is  yours.  It  is  the 
first  struggle  that  counts.  There  is  no 
virtue  in  poor  food  or  in  shabby  cloth- 
ing. Too  long  experience  with  such 
things  will  make  a  man  worse  instead  of 
better.  Poverty  strikes  in.  It  is  not  the 
yoke  of  poverty,  but  the  effort  by  which 


you  throw  it  off  which  makes  a  man  of 
you.  If  you  rise  to  freedom  you  gain  the 
habit  of  rising,  and  the  same  power  of 
effort  you  can  use  in  a  thousand  ways. 

If  you  say  :  I  won't  try.  I  shall  never 
amount  to  anything,  I  am  too  poor,  and 
if  I  wait  to  earn  money  I  shall  be  too 
old  to  go  to  school !  If  you  say  this  and 
act  accordingly  you  will  never  amount 
to  anything,  and  later  in  life  you  will 
be  glad  to  spade  the  rich  man's  garden 
or  to  shovel  his  coal  at  a  dollar  a  day. 

I  once  knew  in  Wisconsin  a  poor  man 
who  earns  a  half-dollar  every  day  by 
driving  a  cow  to  pasture.  He  watches 
her  all  day  as  she  eats  and  drives  her 
home  at  night.  This,  is  all  he  does.  The 
one  balances  the  other,  the  one  enriches 
the  world  as  much  as  the  other.  Put 
here  your  half-dollar  and  there  your 
man.  If  it  were  not  for  that  cow  the 
world  would  not  need  that  man  at  all ! 

I  have  heard  a  father  say  sometimes: 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[49] 


College  I  have  worked  hard  all  my  life  and  I 
and  the  will  give  my  son  an  education  so  that 
he  will  not  have  to  work  as  I  have  done. 
The  result  of  this  every  time  is  disap- 
pointment, for  the  manhood  each  of 
us  attains  must  depend  on  our  own  hard 
work.  But  if  the  father  says:  my  son 
must  be  a  worker  too,  but  I  will  give 
him  an  education  so  that  his  hard  work 
will  count  more  for  him  and  more  for 
the  world  than  mine  has  done,  the  re- 
sults may  be  far  beyond  the  expecta- 
tions of  either.  The  boys  who  are  sent 
to  college  often  do  not  amount  to 
much.  From  the  boys  who  go  to  col- 
lege come  the  builders  of  the  future. 
I  said  just  now  that  you  cannot  put  a 
five-thousand-dollar  education  on  a  fif- 
ty-cent boy.  The  experiment  has  been 
tried  thousands  of  times.  All  our  col- 
leges are  trying  it  over  and  over  again, 
and  it  generally  fails.  What  matter  if 

[  50  ]       it  does?  It  does  no  harm  to  try.  A  few 


hundred  dollars  is  not  too  much  to  risk 
on  an  experiment  like  this.  Maybe 
we  have  undervalued  the  boy.  In  any 
case  we  have  given  him  the  only  thing 
we  can  give  any  man, — that  is,  a  chance 
to  be  fairly  tested.  But  what  shall  we 
say  of  the  man  who  tries  to  put  a  fifty- 
cent  education  on  a  five-thousand  or  a 
million-dollar  boy,  to  narrow  and 
cramp  him  throughout  his  future  life. 
Just  this  is  what  a  million  fathers  and 
mothers  in  America  to-day  are  trying 
to  do  for  their  sons  and  daughters. 
Twenty  years  hence  these  young  men 
and  women  will  blame  these  parents 
for  their  shortness  of  sight  and  narrow- 
ness of  judgment,  weighing  a  few  pal- 
try dollars,  soon  earned,  soon  lost, 
against  the  joy  and  power  and  useful- 
ness which  come  from  thorough  men- 
tal training.  For  a  man  to  have  died 
who  might  have  been  wise  and  was 
not,  this  I  call  a  tragedy!  Something 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[5i] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[52] 


like  this  was  once  said  by  Thomas 
Carlyle,  and  something  like  it  has  been 
said  or  thought  by  thousands  of  men 
when  the  time  was  past  in  which  they 
could  find  a  remedy. 

A  young  man  can  have  no  nobler 
ancestry  than  one  made  up  of  men  and 
women  who  have  worked  for  a  living 
and  who  have  given  honest  work.  The 
instinct  of  industry  is  in  the  blood. 
Some  naturalists  believe,  though  I  do 
not,  that  the  habits  of  one  generation 
are  inherited  by  the  next,  reappearing 
as  instincts.  Anyhow  it  is  easy  to  inher- 
it laziness,  easier  still  to  develop  it; 
and  no  money  or  luck  will  bring  the 
lazy  man  to  the  level  of  his  industrious 
neighbor. 

The  industry  which  grew  with  the 
pioneer  life  of  the  last  generation  is 
still  in  our  veins.  Sons  of  the  western 
pioneers,  ours  is  the  best  blood  in  the 
realm.  Let  us  make  the  most  of  our- 


selves.  If  you  cannot  get  an  education 
in  four  years,  take  ten  years.  Take  all 
the  time  you  need.  It  is  worth  your 
while,  and  your  place  in  the  world  will 
wait  for  you  till  you  are  ready  to  fill 
it. 

When  I  was  a  boy  on  a  farm  in  the 
Genesee  Valley  in  New  York,  a  friend 
whose  name,  John  Lord  Jenkins,  I 
write  in  gratitude,  advised  my  parents 
to  send  me  to  college.  "  But  what  will 
he  find  to  do  when  he  gets  through 
college?"  they  asked.  "Never  mind 
that,"  said  Dr.  Jenkins,  "he  will  al- 
ways find  plenty  to  do.  There  is  always 
room  at  the  top."  Always  room  at  the 
top.  I  have  heard  a  thousand  men  say 
that  since,  but  then  the  word  and 
thought  were  new  to  the  boy.  "Al- 
ways room  at  the  top,  but  the  eleva- 
tor isn't  running."  If  you  want  to  reach 
the  top,  you  must  climb  for  yourselves. 
All   our   professions   are  crowded  in 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[53] 


College  America.  That  any  one  can  see,  but 
and  the  the  crowd  is  all  around  the  bottom  of 
Man  the  ladder.  The  man  who  knows  his 
business  and  who  loyally  does  his  best 
never  finds  his  way  hampered  by  com- 
petition. It  may  take  a  little  while  to 
show  his  mettle,  but  the  right  place 
will  find  the  right  man.  Accident 
aside,  sooner  or  later,  in  our  country, 
every  man  finds  just  the  recognition 
to  which  he  is  entitled.  He  gets  just 
about  what  he  deserves.  If  he  is  worthy 
of  something  better  than  he  gets,  be- 
cause he  does  more  than  he  is  paid  for 
— then  something  better  is  sure  to  open 
before  him.  The  crowd  is  around  the 
bottom  of  the  ladder. 

Do  not  say  that  I  expect  too  much 
from  persistent  resolution,  that  I  give 
you  advice  which  will  lead  you  to  fail- 
ure. For  the  man  who  will  fail  will 
never  take'a  resolution.  Those  among 

[  54  ]       you  whom  fate  has  cut  out  for  nobod- 


ies  are  the  ones  who  will  never  try! 
Frederick  Denison  Maurice  tell  us 
that  "  all  experience  is  against  the  no- 
tion that  the  best  means  to  produce  a 
supply  of  good  ordinary  men  is  to  at- 
tempt nothing  better."  "I  know,"  he 
says,  "that  nine  tenths  of  those  the 
university  turns  out  must  be  hewers 
of  wood  and  drawers  of  water,  but 
if  you  train  the  ten  tenths  to  be  so,  the 
wood  will  be  badly  cut  and  the  water 
will  be  spilt.  Aim  at  something  no- 
ble, make  your  education  such  that  a 
great  man  may  be  formed  by  it,  and 
there  will  be  a  manhood  in  your  lit- 
tle men  of  which  you  do  not  dream ! " 
"  You  will  hear  every  day  around  you ' ' 
—  this  Emerson  once  said  to  the  divini- 
ty students  at  Harvard — "You  will  hear 
every  day  around  you  the  maxims  of  a 
low  prudence.  You  will  hear  that  your 
first  duty  is  to  get  land  and  money,  place 
and  fame.  What  is  this  which  you  seek  ? 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[55] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[56] 


What  is  this  beauty  ?  men  will  ask  in  de- 
rision. Nevertheless,  if  God  have  called 
any  of  you  to  explore  Truth  and  Beau- 
ty, be  bold,  be  firm,  be  true!  When 
you  shall  say,  'As  others  do,  so  will  I. 
I  renounce,  I  am  sorry  for  it,  my  early 
visions.  I  must  eat  the  fruit  of  the  land 
and  let  learning  and  romantic  expecta- 
tion go  until  a  more  convenient  season.' 
Then  dies  the  man  in  you.  Then  once 
more  perish  the  buds  of  art  and  poetry 
and  science  as  they  have  died  already  in 
a  hundred  thousand  men.  The  hour  of 
that  choice  is  the  crisis  in  your  history!" 
But  you  may  ask  me  this  question: 
Will  a  college  education  pay,  consid- 
ered solely  as  a  financial  investment? 
Again  I  must  answer  yes,  though  the 
scholar  seldom  looks  upon  his  power 
as  a  financial  investment.  He  can  do 
better  than  to  get  rich.  The  true  schol- 
ar will  say,  as  Agassiz  once  said  to  a 
Boston  publisher,  "I  have  no  time, 


sir,  to  make  money."  It  is  also  true 
that  in  certain  kinds  of  wealth-pro- 
ducing, an  enlightened  mind  is  no 
help,  but  rather  a  hindrance.  But  this 
is  not  the  career  toward  which  you  are 
looking.  If  it  is,  I  am  not  speaking  to 
you,  and  I  am  sure  you  would  not  lis- 
ten if  I  did.  The  world  does  not  owe 
you  a  living,  and  will  only  grant  it  to 
you,  I  hope,  in  exchange  for  something 
better  than  what  it  gets  from  others. 
If  money  is  all  you  want  it  will  divide 
your  interests  and  confuse  your  purpos- 
es if  you  grow  fond  of  something  else. 
But  if  you  ask  for  effectiveness  in  the 
conduct  of  life,  the  broader  your  out- 
look the  wiser  will  be  your  actions. 
Education  is  better  than  ignorance. 
It  is  more  practical,  as  light  is  more 
practical  than  darkness.  To  be  enlight- 
ened is  to  know  what  is  worth  doing ; 
to  be  trained  is  to  know  how  to  do 
it;  and  the  work  of  the  college  is  to 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[57] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[58] 


give  both  training  and  enlightenment. 

We  shall  not  measure  a  man's  success 
by  the  amount  of  taxes  he  pays  nor  by 
those  whose  payment  he  escapes.  Any 
one  of  our  railroad  magnates  or  bo- 
nanza kings  gains  more  money  in  a 
month  than  any  scholar  in  Christen- 
dom can  earn  in  a  life-time.  Tested 
by  our  standard,  is  this  success  ?  If  so 
you  measure  it,  it  is  not  to  you  I  speak. 
I  know  a  dog  that  has  buried  more 
than  a  hundred  bones  in  his  master's 
garden,  and  yet  he  is  not  on  the  whole 
very  much  of  a  dog. 

We  speak  sometimes  of  the  college 
course  as  distinct  from  the  course  of 
the  university.  In  America,  college  and 
university  are  very  much  blended  to- 
gether, and  they  will  doubtless  remain 
so.  The  college  course  strictly  speaking 
is  intended  to  make  a  man  of  you.  The 
university  is  to  fit  this  man  for  his  spe- 
cial work  in  the  world.  But  in  our  talk 


here,  we  may  speak  of  both  together      College 
as  college  education,  for  in  America      and  the 
the  two  forms  of  education  are  not      Man 
separated  in  spirit  or  in  fact. 

But  this  is  true — the  college  train- 
ing, the  university  education,  will  not 
make  you  a  millionaire.  The  acquisi- 
tion of  great  wealth  is  a  specialty,  the 
gift  for  which  comes  to  but  few,  not 
always  to  those  who  most  value  it.  The 
inheritance  of  great  wealth  is  a  thing 
very  different  from  the  creation  of  it ; 
and  again,  to  gather  is  not  to  create. 
Mere  inheritance  is  an  anachronism, 
a  belated  custom  of  feudal  times, 
which  civilized  nations  have  not  yet 
abolished.  Money  inherited  is  more 
often  than  otherwise  a  misfortune  to 
the  individual  whose  life  it  overshad- 
ows and  sterilizes.  Creation  of  wealth, 
like  all  forms  of  creation,  should  en- 
noble and  strengthen:  gathering  de- 
pends on  the  methods  of  the  gatherer.       [  59  ] 


College  But  leaving  all  these  questions  aside, 
and  the  in  our  nation  of  working  men  and  wo- 
Man  men  it  is  true  that  the  educated  man 
gets  the  best  pay.  Brain  work  is  higher 
than  hand  work;  skilled  labor  is  better 
than  muscle  labor.  It  earns  more  money 
and  it  is  better  paid.  And  as  industries 
progress  and  grow  differentiated  this 
distinction  will  be  greater  and  greater. 
The  man  with  the  mind  is  the  boss, 
and  the  boss  receives  a  larger  salary 
than  the  hands  whose  work  he  directs. 
All  development  of  skill  in  labor  is  a 
form  of  education.  The  unskilled  la- 
borer should  not  exist  in  a  free  country. 
For  with  any  degree  of  political  free- 
dom he  can  never  be  free.  If  he  were, 
he  would  be  a  skilled  laborer.  The 
unskilled  man  has  not  made  the  most 
of  himself  and  hence  he  is  by  nature  a 
slave,  a  slave  to  destructive  habits,  a 
slave  to  the  tyranny  of  capitalists,  or  to 

[  60  ]       the  parallel  and  fiercer  tyranny  of  his 


brother  workmen.  What  the  unskilled 
laborer  can  do,  a  hod  of  coal  and  a 
bucket  of  water  will  do  better  if  han- 
dled by  skill — if  directed  by  some  man 
of  education.  To  save  the  unskilled  la- 
borer from  the  bonds  into  which  igno- 
rance suffers  him  to  fall  is  the  purpose 
of  our  public  school  system.  The  truth 
makes  free,  and  it  has  the  same  influ- 
ence all  along  the  educational  line  from 
the  primary  school  to  the  university. 
This  is  the  justification  of  the  public 
school  system,  and  the  same  justifica- 
tion holds  for  every  part  of  it. 

Everywhere  in  our  professions  it  is 
the  trained  men  that  take  the  lead. 
Among  our  teachers,  our  preachers, 
our  lawyers,  our  doctors,  our  politicians 
even,  the  college  men  stand  at  the  head. 
Short-sighted  and  foolish  is  the  young 
man  who  goes  into  the  sharp  competi- 
tion of  life  without  the  best  aid  that 
lies  within  his  reach. 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[61] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[62] 


Some  time  ago  Chancellor  Lippin- 
cott,  of  the  State  University  of  Kansas, 
wrote  to  each  of  the  graduates  of  that 
institution  asking  each  to  state  "  briefly 
the  advantages  which  your  experience 
proves  that  you  derived  from  your  uni- 
versity life  and  work." 

Here  are  some  of  the  answers: 

One  says : 

"  My  love  for  the  State  grew  with 
every  lesson  I  received  through  her 
care.  I  saved  five  years  of  my  life 
through  her  training  and  I  am  a  more 
loyal  and  a  better  citizen." 

Another  had 

"  A  better  standing  in  the  community 
than  I  could  have  gained  in  any  other 
way." 

Another 

"  Would  not  exchange  the  advantages 
gained  for  a  hundred  times  their  cost  to 
the  State  or  to  myself." 

Another  found  it 


"Financially  the  best  investment  I 
ever  made." 

Another  had 

"  The  gratifying  feeling  that  I  know 
at  least  a  little  more  than  is  absolutely 
necessary  for  making  my  living." 

Still  another  received 

"  Strong  friendship  with  the  most  in- 
telligent young  men  of  the  State,  those 
who  are  certain  largely  to  influence  its 
destiny." 

And  in  similar  vein,  the  rest.  Thus  it 
is  in  Kansas,  and  thus  it  is  everywhere. 
For  the  young  man  or  woman  of  char- 
acter, the  college  education  does  "pay" 
from  whatever  standpoint  you  may 
choose  to  regard  it. 

We  are  proud  and  justly  proud  of  our 
common  school  system.  The  free 
school  stands  at  every  northern  cross- 
road and  is  rapidly  forcing  its  way  into 
the  great  new  south.  Every  effort  is 
made  to  elevate  the  masses.  There  is  no 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[63] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[64] 


upper  class  reaping  the  benefits  of  an 
education  for  which  the  poor  man  has 
to  pay.  There  is  no  caste,  educated  and 
ruling  by  right  of  birth  ;  no  hereditary 
house  of  Lords.  Our  scholars  and  our 
leaders  are  of  the  people,  from  the 
people. 

The  American  plan  has  made  us  an 
intelligent  people.  The  number  of 
persons  ignorant  or  indifferent  is  less 
in  our  northern  states  than  in  England 
or  Germany  or  France.  But  for  our 
number,  we  have  fewer  educated  men 
in  America  than  have  any  of  these  na- 
tions. In  literature,  in  science,  in  phi- 
losophy, we  still  go  to  Europe  for  our 
models.  In  mechanical  invention  we 
lead  the  world,  for  there  is  no  one  who 
so  readily  adapts  circumstances  to  his 
purposes  as  the  American.  But  in  every 
other  department  of  thought,  Ameri- 
can work  has  been  contented  to  bear  the 
stamp  of  mediocrity.  The  world  has  a 


right  to  expect  better  things  of  us. 
The  land  of  freedom,  as  Emerson  has 
said,  has  failed,  is  failing  to  "satisfy  the 
reasonable  expectations  of  mankind." 

All  our  professions  are  crowded  with 
men  who  have  rushed  in  prematurely. 
They  jostle  each  other  around  the  foot 
of  the  ladder — they  are  unable  to  as- 
cend. All  this  is  less  true  to-day  than 
it  was  twenty  or  thirty  years  ago,  but 
it  should  not  be  true  to  any  extent  at 
all. 

In  the  different  training  schools  of 
our  states,  great  and  small,  many  thou- 
sands of  young  people  are  gathered  to- 
gether to  prepare  for  the  profession  of 
teaching.  Of  these  not  one  in  fifty  will 
remain  in  school  long  enough  to  secure 
even  the  elements  of  a  liberal  educa- 
tion. Fifteen  minutes  for  dinner;  fifty 
weeks  for  an  education !  For  the  lowest 
grades  of  schools  there  are  candidates 
by  the  score,  but  when  a  college  wants 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[65] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[66] 


a  man  for  a  man's  work,  it  cannot  make 
use  of  these  teachers,  excellent  as  many 
of  them  are  in  the  lower  field  they  have 
chosen.  We  must  search  far  and  wide 
for  the  man  to  whom  a  present  offer 
of  fifty  dollars  a  month  has  not  seemed 
more  important  than  the  grand  oppor- 
tunities of  a  scholar's  life.  A  bird  in  the 
hand  is  not  worth  ten  in  the  bush.  You 
cannot  afford  to  sell  your  future  at  so 
heavy  a  discount. 

We  say  sometimes  that  the  American 
public  school  exists  for  the  elevation 
of  the  masses.  This  is  true,  but  it  has  in 
fact  a  higher  aim  than  this.  It  is  to 
break  up  the  masses  that  they  may  be 
masses  no  more,  but  individual  men  and 
women.  Its  aim  is  to  draw  forth  the 
individual,  to  make  the  most  of  his 
powers,  whatever  these  may  be;  for 
each  man  is  a  separate  creation,  and  his 
array  of  force  in  its  full  range  was  never 
borne  by  any  man  before,  nor  will  its 


exact  likeness  ever  be  known  again. 
America  is  the  land  of  the  individual 
man.  For  better  or  for  worse,  and  on 
the  whole  for  better,  each  man  in  our 
country  lives  his  own  life,  and  on  his 
own  character  and  training  depends  its 
outcome. 

We  see  a  regiment  of  soldiers  on 
parade.  In  dress  and  mien  all  are  alike, 
— the  mass.  By  and  by  in  the  business 
of  war  comes  the  call  to  lead  some  for- 
lorn hope,  to  do  some  deed  of  bravery 
in  the  face  of  danger.  From  the  masses 
steps  forth  the  man.  His  training  shows 
itself.  On  parade,  no  more,  no  less 
than  the  others,  he  stands  above  them 
all  when  the  time  for  trial  comes.  So 
it  is  in  other  times,  in  other  places,  for 
the  greatest  need  of  men  is  not  on  the 
field  of  battle. 

In  like  fashion  we  see  a  thousand 
boys  to-day  at  play  in  the  fields  of  our 
own  state.   Let  us  train  these  boys  as 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[67] 


College  well  as  we  can ;  let  us  try  to  make  them 
and  the  clean,  honest,  enlightened.  But  among 
Man  them  here  and  there  we  shall  find  the 
future  leader  of  men.  Let  us  raise  him 
from  the  level,  or  rather,  let  us  give  him 
the  chance  to  raise  himself — for  the 
pine  in  the  thicket  needs  no  outside 
help  to  place  its  head  above  the  sassa- 
fras and  sumac.  If  our  public  school 
system,  primary  school  and  university, 
makes  our  masses  into  men,  if  it  helps 
the  individual  to  be  his  most  effective 
self,  it  has  given  us  all  that  we  can  hope 
— all  that  we  ought  to  ask.  "The  best 
political  economy,"  says  Emerson,  "is 
the  care  and  culture  of  men."  It  is  not 
achievement  which  we  ask  of  it — it  is 
aid  to  individual  growth.  The  glory  of 
America  lies  in  the  future,  not  in  the 
past;  not  in  what  we  have  done  and 
finished,  but  in  the  hope  of  growth. 
We  try  to  do  things  better  each  suc- 

[  68  ]        ceeding  year,  and  sometimes  we  sue- 


ceed,  often  enough  at  least  to  justify  our 
confident  optimism. 

What  does  the  college  do  for  the 
moral,  the  religious  education  of  the 
youth  ?  It  may  do  very  much  if  it  gets 
at  it  in  the  right  way,  but  its  means 
must  be  largely  personal,  not  official. 
"To  bring  boys  and  girls  into  ways  of 
righteousness  we  must  let  them  see  how 
righteousness  looks  when  it  is  lived." 

If  your  college  assume  to  stand  in  loco 
parentis,  with  a  rod  in  hand  and  spy- 
glasses on  its  nose,  it  will  not  do  much 
in  the  way  of  moral  training.  "Free 
should  the  scholar  be,  free  and  brave." 
"  The  petty  restraints  which  may  hold 
in  check  the  college  snob  and  the  col- 
lege sham  are  an  insult  to  college  men 
and  women."  It  is  for  the  training  of 
men  and  women  that  the  college  exists. 
The  college  cannot  be  a  reform  school. 
It  cannot  officially  take  the  place  of  the 
parent.  To  claim  that  it  does  so  is  mere 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[69] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[70] 


pretense.  You  cannot  drive  young  men 
into  ways  of  righteousness  through  fear 
of  the  college  faculty. 

This  the  college  can  do  for  moral 
training :  it  can  strengthen  the  student 
in  his  search  for  truth ;  it  can  encour- 
age manliness  in  him  by  the  putting 
away  of  childish  things. 

Take  the  dozen  students  at  Munich 
of  whom  Agassiz  has  spoken.  Do  you 
suppose  that  Dr.  Dbllinger  caught  any 
of  these  cheating  on  examinations? 
Did  the  three  young  men  at  Williams 
College  choose  the  haystack  rather 
than  the  billiard  hall  for  fear  of  the 
college  faculty?  The  love  of  knowl- 
edge, the  growth  of  power,  the  sense 
of  personal  responsibility,  these  are  our 
college  agencies  for  keeping  off  our 
evil.  The  love  which  casts  out  fear  is 
the  enthusiasm  for  real  work,  for  the 
higher  activities  of  the  higher  life. 

As  in  moral  so  in  religious  matters, 


the  college  must  operate  through  work 
and  through  example.  The  college 
cannot  make  a  student  moral  or  relig- 
ious through  enforced  attendance  at 
church  or  chapel.  It  cannot  arouse  the 
spiritual  element  in  his  nature  by  any 
system  of  demerit  marks.  But  let  him 
find  somewhere  the  work  of  his  life. 
Let  the  thoughts  of  the  student  be  free 
as  the  air.  Give  him  a  message  to  speak 
to  other  men,  and  when  he  leaves  your 
care  you  need  fear  for  him  not  the  world 
nor  the  flesh  nor  the  devil ! 

If  your  Christianity  or  your  creed 
seem  to  the  student  to  need  a  bias  in 
its  favor,  if  it  seem  to  him  unable  to 
hold  its  own  in  a  free  investigation,  he 
will  despise  it,  and  if  he  is  honest  he 
will  turn  from  it.  Religion  must  come 
to  him  as  a  "  strong  and  mighty  angel," 
asking  no  aid  of  church  or  state  in  its 
battle  against  error  and  wrong. 

Whatever  the  temporary  phases  of 


College 
and  the 
Man 


[7i] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[72] 


the  student's  thought,  he  will  come  out 
all  right  in  the  end.  He  whose  mind  is 
trained  and  free  stands  in  no  danger 
from  the  scoffer  or  the  bigot.  He  will 
not  mistake  a  fly  on  the  object-glass  of 
his  telescope  for  an  eclipse  of  the  sun. 
This  is  a  practical  age,  we  say,  and 
we  hold  in  low  esteem  all  sorts  of 
dreams  and  visions.  We  ask  what  is  the 
value  of  truth  and  beauty,  of  zeal  and 
devotion,  of  religion  and  piety,  as 
though  all  these  things,  for  sale  in  the 
city  markets  and  shopworn  through 
the  ages,  were  going  at  a  sacrifice.  But 
the  practical  rests  on  the  ideal.  "  My 
son,"  says  Victor  Cherbuliez,  "my 
son,  we  should  lay  up  a  stock  of  absurd 
enthusiasms  in  our  youth  or  else  we 
shall  reach  the  end  of  our  journey  with 
an  empty  heart,  for  we  lose  a  great 
many  of  them  by  the  way."  It  is  the 
noblest  duty  of  higher  education,  I  be- 
lieve, to  fill  the  mind  of  the  youth  with 


these  enthusiasms,  thoughts  of  the  College 
work  a  man  can  do,  with  visions  of  and  the 
how  this  man  can  do  it.  It  should  Man 
teach  him  to  believe  that  love  and  faith 
and  zeal  and  devotion  are  real  things, 
things  of  great  worth,  things  that  are 
embodied  in  the  lives  of  men  and 
women.  It  should  teach  him  to  know 
these  men  and  women,  whether  of  the 
present  or  of  the  past,  and  knowing 
them  his  life  will  become  insensibly 
fashioned  after  theirs.  It  should  lead 
him  to  form  plans  for  the  part  he  has 
to  play  in  science,  in  art,  in  religion. 
His  work  may  fall  far  short  of  what  he 
would  make  it,  but  a  noble  plan  must 
precede  each  worthy  achievement. 

"Colleges  can  only  serve  us,"  says 
Emerson,  "  when  they  aim  not  to  drill 
but  to  create.  They  bring  every  ray  of 
various  genius  to  their  hospitable  halls, 
and  by  their  combined  effort  set  the 
heart  of  the  youth  in  flame."  [  73  ] 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[74] 


I  once  climbed  a. mountain  slope  in 
Utah,  in  midsummer,  when  every 
blade  of  grass  was  dried  to  a  yellow 
crisp.  Here  and  there  I  saw  a  line  of 
vivid  green  across  the  yellow  pastures 
running  down  to  the  lake.  I  could  not 
see  the  water,  but  I  knew  that  the 
brook  was  there,  for  only  the  flow  of 
water  can  keep  the  grass  as  green.  Like 
this  brook  in  the  hot  fields  may  be  the 
life  of  the  scholar  in  the  world  of  men. 
I  look  out  over  the  lives  of  struggling 
men  and  women.  I  see  the  weary  soul, 
the  lost  ambition, 

"  the  haggard  face 
And  form  that  drooped  and  fainted 
In  the  fierce  race  for  wealth." 

Here  and  there  I  trace  some  line  in 
life  along  which  I  see  springing  up  all 
things  good  and  gracious.  This  is  the 
scholar's  work  and  along  his  pathway 
I  trace  the  growth  of  love  of  nature, 
the  love  of  goodness,  the  love  of  God. 


For  best  of  all  the  scholars  privileges 
is  that  which  Dr.  Hale  has  called 
"  Lending  a  hand."  The  scholar  travels 
the  way  of  life  well  equipped  with 
things  which  others  need.  He  may  not 
travel  that  way  again.  You  know  the 
word  of  the  old  Quaker, — what  he 
does  for  his  neighbor  must  be  done 
where  his  neighbor  is.  The  noblest 
lives  have  left  their  traces  not  alone  in 
science  or  in  literature  or  in  history, 
but  in  the  hearts  of  men. 

"  Some  years  ago,  in  a  Southern  Indi- 
ana neighborhood,"  William  Lowe 
Bryan  once  said,  "I  came  across  the 
traces  of  a  man.  They  were  just  as  dis- 
tinct and  as  satisfactory  as  the  traces  of 
a  vanished  glacier.  A  good  many  years 
had  gone  by  since  the  man  went  into 
Southern  Indiana  to  teach.  No  great 
experience  nor  breadth  of  training  was 
his.  I  know  not  what  methods  or  text- 
books he  used,  but  in  all  conditions 


College 

and  the 

Man 


[76] 


of  society  I  could  trace  the  fact  that 
this  boy-teacher  was  a  man,  earnest, 
courageous,  inspiring." 

As  I  have  gone  about  over  this  coun- 
try of  ours,  I  have  found  here  and  there, 
East  and  West,  North  and  South,  in 
cities  and  in  villages,  traces  which  show 
here  and  there  clearly  that  a  man  had 
lived.  And  the  best  traces  of  a  man  are 
shown  in  the  better  manhood  of  those 
who  have  grown  up  around  him. 

Now  you  will  go  to  college  for  better 
or  for  worse.  Where  shall  you  go? 
The  answer  to  this  is  simple.  Get  the 
best  you  can  !  You  have  but  one  chance 
for  a  college  education.  You  cannot 
afford  to  waste  that  chance  on  third- 
rate  or  fourth-rate  schools.  Go  where 
the  masters  are,  in  whatever  line  you 
wish  to  study. 

Look  over  this  matter  carefully,  for  it 
is  all-important.  Go  for  your  education 
to  that  school  in  whatever  state  or  coun- 


try  —  under  whatever  name  or  control 
— that  will  serve  your  purposes  best, 
that  will  give  you  the  best  returns  for 
the  money  you  are  able  to  spend.  Do 
not  stop  with  the  middle-men.  Go  to 
the  men  who  know,  the  men  who  can 
lift  you  beyond  the  primary  details  to 
the  thoughts  and  researches  which  are 
the  work  of  the  university. 

There  is  but  one  thing  which  makes 
a  university  strong  and  useful.  That  is 
a  university  faculty,  a  body  of  wise 
men,  sound  and  earnest,  men  who  know 
and  men  who  can  do  along  the  lines  of 
their  own  precepts.  All  other  matters, 
without  this,  are  of  less  than  no  impor- 
tance. Buildings,  departments,  libra- 
ries, laboratories,  wealth  and  numbers, 
rules  and  regulations,  do  not  make  a 
university.  It  is  the  men  who  teach. 
Go  where  the  masters  are  in  whatever 
line  you  wish  to  study. 

Far  more  important  than  the  question 


College 

and  the 

Man 


of  what  you  shall  study  is  the  question 
of  who  shall  be  your  teachers.  The 
teacher  is  not  a  machine  for  prodding 
and  plodding,  to  put  black  marks  after 
the  names  of  lazy  boys.  He  should  be 
a  source  of  inspiration,  leading  the  stu- 
dent in  his  department  to  the  farthest 
limit  of  what  is  known,  inciting  him 
to  excursions  into  the  infinitely  greater 
realm  of  the  unknown. 

Let  the  school  do  for  you  all  that  it 
can,  and  when  you  have  entered  on  the 
serious  business  of  life  let  your  own 
work  and  your  own  influence  in  the 
community  be  ever  the  strongest  plea 
that  can  be  urged  in  behalf  of  Higher 
Education. 


[78] 


DATE  DUE 

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